For the past few weeks, I and some others have been in the process of
setting up a new MediaWiki-based wiki site devoted to the "Star Trek"
television series, called Memory Alpha. We have had few problems after
the initial pains of actual installation; however, in trying to adapt
the MW framework for our site, we've been running into a few snags.
The main problem from my perspective is documentation for users of the
wiki software in sites which are not straight-up mirrors of Wikipedia.
We've been doing a rather haphazard job of copying over the various
bits of documentation for using the site -- stuff like how to write an
article, how to edit a page, the policies and guidelines, and other
material.
Our problem is that so many of these pages will definitely be useful,
and although they'll most likely be adapted and changed as time goes on
and we set up our own policies, I think it would still be useful if we
could have something that we could start with.
Currently, MediaWiki uses the website's name to create a separate
namespace for documentation and other "meta" type pages. (I'm not
referring to the Meta-Wikipedia, but rather the "Wikipedia:" pages on
Wikipedia itself.) And I realize that this is probably a workable
system...
But, considering that the MediaWiki software is made publicly available
for download and for establishing other websites, I wonder if it might
be useful to have some kind of help "module" -- that is, a collected
copy of the documentation pages that can be easily copied and set up on
other sites. Possibly, this could also add a new "Help:" namespace
which would help distinguish those pages for the general users. But
that last isn't really necessary as far as the content goes, although
it would make linking between the various help pages simpler if the
namespace wasn't changed on each site.
I'm not a programmer myself, although I've got a basic grasp of coding
and I'm very slowly learning PHP. I could probably try to help if
someone else wanted to try to implement this or something similar, but
I thought that I would propose this idea to the group first, seeing as
how many of you are a lot more familiar with the MW's inner workings.
Thanks,
Dan Carlson
Administrator, Memory Alpha
http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/